FAYETTEVILLE — Block Avenue is on course to get a substantial facelift in 2010, as the city plans to replace sidewalks, curbs and other features.
“Block, by far, this will be a huge project,” Terry Gulley, Fayetteville transportation director, told the Street Committee on Tuesday, as the committee reviewed projects the city will likely take on in 2010.
The list of projects — totaling some 16 miles — will be forwarded to the City Council for official adoption.
“Barring some big event — like an ice storm — we anticipate being able to complete these projects next year,” Gulley said. The sidewalk and street resurfacing projects are paid for primarily through the city’s capital improvement projects program. It’s not yet clear exactly how much the projects will cost, but about $2.5 million is budgeted for 2010.
“We fit the program to the money we have,” Gulley said.
Several plans for the Block Avenue improvement will be presented in January 2010, Gulley said. The street committee will review them, take public feedback and then move forward with the project.
“We hope to have it finished by the end of 2010,” Gulley said. The project will stretch from Rock to Dickson streets, but does not include the block between Center and Mountain streets on the downtown square. Residents and businesses in the area can expect much of the same type of project seen in the Dickson Street and College Avenue renovation, which included new street trees, light fixtures, grates, handicap access ramps and other improvement.
“It’s going to make it more pedestrian-friendly, to bring it up to something closer to Dickson Street and the square,” Gulley said.
Each ward in the city is assigned roughly the same amount of sidewalk and or street work every year. Generally, the projects are measured in terms of how many feet gets covered. But this model mostly ignores costly sidewalk projects — generally in steep sections of town such as Mount Sequoyah — where a quarter-mile of sidewalk on a 15 percent slope can be far more expensive than a mile of flat sidewalk.
Don Marr, chief of staff, urged the committee to not forget about those uncomfortable strips of walkway.
“Some year, I want y’all to get away from length of sidewalks and go out and find the projects, like steep sidewalks, that can still make a big difference,” Marr told the committee.
The area that seems to fit this scenario precisely are the steep crumbling sidewalks on East Spring Street. East Dickson Street runs parallel, but much of it doesn’t even have a sidewalk.
“You have to go all the way over to Lafayette (street) to find a decent sidewalk,” said Harriet Jansma, who lives in the area.
“When the sidewalk was put on Fletcher (Avenue) I began to see what a sidewalk could do for a neighborhood,” Jansma added. “It really opened up our neighborhood to the town.”
AT A GLANCE
2010 Street And Sidewalk Projects
Street Overlay, Sidewalks
Ward 1: 3.9 miles, 5,992 feet
Ward 2: 3.9 miles, 10,616 feet
Ward 3: 4.2 miles, 3,737 feet
Ward 4: 3.7 miles, 4,830 feet
Total 15.7 miles, 24,040 feet
Source: Staff Report